The keen-sighted patient realized that her ailment was progressive, that it might be palliated though not cured, and that the imperative treatment lay in a simplified mode of life with avoidance of care, anxiety and excitement. So she retired from the last detail of private practice, put her affairs in order, even arranging her funeral service, and then she cheerfully turned her mind to bearing her discomforts philosophically and to making the best of the time which remained. When the realization of the finality of her situation came to her, she was undoubtedly shaken (when the final summons comes, every normal-minded human being quivers, even if it be only for the moment), but she was not dismayed. Subconsciously her physical condition must have aroused compensatory instincts, as it does with all of us, for at one time she wrote: Death is to me a good friend. Whenever it comes, it is welcome. So many of my contemporaries have gone and are going into Nirvana, the world becomes young daily and new to me, into which newness I can hardly find myself. So that, when I say, “I have enough,” I say the truth. But additional acceptance of her position was favored by the serenity which comes to a mind which had long recognized the inevitable limitations which time would some time bring, for she writes: For some years I have been saving money for old age, and in fact, I have done what I have so often encouraged other women to do--become independent of friends and charity. I have arranged to be independent until eighty years--to which age I sincerely hope not to live. She seldom spoke of herself or of her feelings, but at one time she wrote: If it were not for my poor head, I would say I was in better health than for years. But, alas! the nervous centers refuse to recuperate and the least excitement renders me sleepless, and a host of regrets, reproaches and condemnations rise up like demons to torment me. Then, in one of the characteristic remissions of the condition, she writes, with one of her customary glints of humor: I intend to live another seventy years because life seems so well worth living. Once she wrote more in detail to Mrs. Cheney, because, as she said: ... It seems to me right that my dearest and oldest friend should understand me and not misjudge my actions.... Years ago some confusion of mind warned me of trouble to come, and it finally set in in the form of noises in my head. I scolded myself for being so nervous in my behavior while being irritated by these sounds, and I went gladly to California, hoping to get benefit by diversion. However, the two distinct noises on the top of my head kept increasing so that even the noise of the cars did not drown them. Still I forced myself to act cheerfully and was determined not to be hopeless. Little by little, however, indifference toward events, then toward people, and now toward the beauty of nature, has crept upon me.